


Blind Devotion

by FetFemme



Series: Reaper Wars [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Other, Pre-Relationship, Reapers, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 09:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8397163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FetFemme/pseuds/FetFemme
Summary: Where Liara comes to terms with the fact that her devotion and passion towards Normandy's resident prothean is misguided and Javik realizes that the asari is more than just a primitive species. Fluff and possibly a steamy scene in later chapters.





	

Returning from Thessia was difficult.

On the shuttle to the Normandy, Shepard was silent- boiling with rage at the swordsman Cerberus puppet, as well as mourning the loss of the asari homeworld, dreading her report to the asari councillor, and devastated by the information that was crucial to finishing the Crucible. Tali was sobbing silently into her hands, the slow fog misting her face-mask making her squinted eyes glow with a sad mysticism. But all Liara could do was stare down at her legs. There were jagged tears in her light armor from debris, multicolored splatters of blood dripping down from the calves of her pants all the way soles of her boots- the blood of not only countless reaper creatures, but her sisters in arms.

They docked silently, with no smart-ass remarks from Joker, or the usual buzz of activity from the CIC, all were quiet with both mourning and respect. Liara walked faster than the rest. Shepard, assuming that the young asari was waiting until she was in her room to breakdown in tears, followed with a muted haste. Tali exited the airlock and just sat in the co-pilot’s chair next to Joker, leaning her head against the consoles to continue crying gently. No one got used to the death of the masses, no matter how long they’d been fighting in this war.

Liara continued, walking into the elevator and pressing buttons harshly, ignoring the fact that Shepard just barely made it in before the doors close. The commander waited with bated breath as the elevator dinged at their arrival, and quickly followed, her curiosity increasing as she stormed into Javik’s room.

"Those were all lies back there!" Liara crowed at the unsuspecting Prothean. He raised his brow lightly, before realization dawned on his face. He scoffed and turned to face her.  
“They were not.” He said in a clipped manner, anger rushing into his voice.  
“My people weren't animals for your kind to experiment on!” She snarled, edging closer to him.  
“You wanted to know more about your history, asari. now you do.” He sneered, muttering about primitive alien species under his breath. However, his clipped answers only further fueled the furious woman.

Her body buzzed with a biotic blue corona, her fingers curled half way into fists as she paced closer to Javik. “I have a name!” She growled, her usually soft-spoken voice raw and strained with distress, “It's Liara T'Soni. And I'd appreciate you using it from now on!”

Shepard jumped up, deciding to finally intervene, "Hey, settle down!" Shepard demanded, not wanting to break a fight up in such a small area of the ship. There was a moment of quiet, Liara’s tense stance making her wordless threat to the lone prothean clear as day.

“My home was just destroyed... and all he can do is gloat!” Liara choked, the last of her words disappearing in a half-sob. Shepard took a deep breath, pressing her hand into the middle of her forehead. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was lay down with her datapads to plan the next move for the war and figure out what she was going to say to the Council. She sighed out heavily, turning the angry duo.

“Given what's happened today, I think you owe Liara an apology Javik.”

“Apologize for the truth?" The prothean scoffed, folding his arms together with his usual air of disdain, “I would sooner-”

“For not doing more!" Liara wailed, her breath close to hyperventilation. Her cheeks were dusted with a purple blush from over-exertion, her eyes were lined with a thin film of unfallen tears, and her hands twitched, desperate to show the man just how violent she could be as the Shadow Broker. "You're a Prothean, you were supposed to have all the answers! How could you not stop this from happening?”

“We believed you would," He sighed, looking to the ground. Liara loosens her fight pose, glancing over at Shepard quickly, before returning to Javik with wide, watery eyes. Shepard looked between the two of them, urging Javik menacingly with her eyes to elaborate. He nodded slightly, "Long ago we saw the potential in your people. Even then it was obvious, the wisdom, the patience. You were the best hope for this cycle. So, you were... guided, when necessary.”

“Well it didn't work," she whispered, blinking at the ground to halt any tears from falling.  
He looked at her, face relaxed but still tensed with his hastily retreating disgust, "You're still alive, aren't you? Your world may have fallen but as long as even one asari is left standing the fight isn't over."

Liara nodded numbly before making eye contact with him, “I guess that goes for Protheans, too."

“Despair is the enemy's greatest weapon." He said quieter, sauntering closer to her, his four eyes lighting up with insistence. He tilted his head down to meet her eyes "Do not let them wield it... Liara T'soni." Her lips quirked in a half-smirk, but she looked away and left his space with a mourning slowness, still looking at the blood and dirt splattered on her boots.

Shepard released the breath she was holding, happy she didn't have to fight Javik in his haste to shoot the asari doctor out of the airlock. "That was... unexpected." She admitted. "Thank you."

He nodded, "We still need her talents, if grief overcomes her, she will be lost to us." before turning back to his work-space and ignoring the commander's presence once again.

A long silence fell between them, he kept looking over his shoulder in annoyance as she stood by the door. she finally asked the question she was dreading to ask on her ex-lover's behalf. "So did you actually mean what you said?"

Javik remained looking at his work, but his shoulders fell, "Does it matter?"

"Liara means a great deal to me, we have a strong bond, even though we've had some troubles." She said firmly, "It matters."

"Then I will tell you what you want to hear: I meant what I said."

“Now leave.” He growled.

 

-TIME BREAK--

 

A week or so later, Shepard had called for the skeleton crew to work the ship, while the rest relaxed for the evening. The crew deck was littered with exhausted Alliance personnel and aliens trying to forget their troubles under plates of food and the variety of alcohol provided in the starboard lounge.

 

Tali was chatting up Adams, who looked very tired of talking about drive cores and eezo, but Liara sat idly near by and listened with vague interest. Shepard and Garrus were in a secluded corner, looking very cozy until Vega, Cortez, and Kaidan had wandered over with a deck of cards for Skyllian five. Traynor drunkenly sat too close to EDI while the AI’s physical form played with the material of Joker’s shirt, trying to familiarize herself with the concept of touch. Even Javik joined in, but was quiet throughout the evening.

 

When the party had died down, Shepard had half-dragged Garrus onto the captain's deck and directed him to stumble into her bed. He was sprawled out face down, his left mandible fluttering weakly. When she leaned in closer, she realized he was attempting to speak to her but his words were drowned out in the slurring drunken purrs of his subvocals. She shook her head with a small smile gracing her features. She took peace in the seemingly domestic moment of arranging the pillows around his neck, carapace, and shoulder before pushing him onto his back and pulling her blankets around him.

She wandered into the bathroom, changing into more sleep-appropriate attire and dropping her clothes into the laundry vent. She tiptoed out quietly and sat at her computer desk to work, her sleepy, alcohol fueled buzz having already left with the quick rhythms of her metabolism.

Usually the whoosh of her doors opening was near silent among the rumbles of the ship engines and mass effect fields, as well as the pulsing music she usually played and the fish gurgling about in their tank. However, in the dead of the night, her door opening was the loudest thing on the entire floor. She jumped slightly, hand going to a non-existent gun on hip of her pajama shorts. She whirled around to the find the prothean sullenly leaning on the doorjamb to her room. The habitually haughty alien was unable to meet her eyes.

"Javik?" She asked hesitantly. His eyes flickered up momentarily, but continued to his feet.

“I once told her that protheans invented electricity." He laughed humorlessly under his breath, "The asari will believe anything.”

“Why are you here?” She asked with annoyance. She was tired, mildly tipsy, and increasingly pissed that the alien walked into her room unannounced at two in the morning.

"The crew seemed shocked by the experimentation at Sanctuary." He whispered. "They shouldn't have been."

"Why do you say that?" She responded, weary at the sudden morbidity flooding into the room. She looked over at the completely unconscious turian in her bed. His head lifted to look at Garrus as well- but again, only for a moment. He drew out his silence, though she couldn't figure out whether or not it was his pure stubborn personality or merely a drunken haze. She wasn't really sure how the lone alien handled alcohol, having not eaten or drunken anything for almost 50,000 years before recently.

"Our war lasted centuries." He croaked, sinking his weight into the wall by the door. "It provided more time for worse atrocities to be committed."

"There was a species, the Densorin. They became convinced that the Reapers could be placated by sacrificing their own young. The entire planet joined in this ritual." His eyes flashed, recalling the sheer number of bodies he'd discovered in his visits there. He shook the ghosts from his head. "I will spare you the details."

He grimaced in her direction, “Needless to say that it did not work. They simply made the Reapers' job easier. It was as your Illusive man is now, his ambitions are nothing short of madness. Sharpen your knife commander, his is a voice that must be silenced- a throat that must be slit."

With that being said, he left, stumbling slightly over his feet as he approached the elevator. Shepard stared after him, wide eyed with shock. She had never really considered the war lasting beyond her. Hundreds of years. She shook her head with a small shudder, the room seeming much colder. She shut off her computer and quietly padded over to her bed. She gingerly lifted the covers and snuggled into the warm, sleeping turian. He groaned in his sleep and slung an arm over her waist. She prayed to whatever would listen for a dreamless sleep.

But Javik's adventures did not end there. To him, it was only fair that the asari- Liara T'Soni- was also aware of the ghosts of war lingering over his shoulder. He'd rode the elevator to the crew deck- mindlessly noting that this is the most he's wandered the strange ship since he awoke from his chemically induced sleep of fifty millennia- and walked into her quarters without so much as a knock. Her holographic drone cheerfully greeted him.

She looked up, her shock mirroring Shepard's to a lesser extent. She wasn't used to being caught unaware these days and it showed. She was working diligently on her several computer screens in a nightgown of slight material. She ran a hand over her head wearily, "Whatever it is you feel you must say at this appalling hour, I don't want to hear it."

He opened his mouth to speak, still intoxicated but significantly more on edge around the woman, but she spoke over whatever he was about to say.

"I'm tired, Javik. My people have been decimated at the very least, I have spread myself thin trying to aid others in this war, and I am just tired." Liara said softly, not taking her eyes of the screen. "Please leave."

After her tired admission was over, his mouth was still parted to speak, but feeling foolish, he's closed it. "I am humbled, only mildly so." He said conversationally. "I do not wish to take leave, there are things that need to be said."

Her eyes narrowed, finally leaving the screen to take in his drunken appearance. "I swear to the goddess,” She spat coldly, “If this is some drawn out scheme to get my attention only to tell me about how primitive I am or... or how- how foolish I've been to waste my life idolizing your people-"

"It is not."

She let out a shaky breath, "What do you want?"

"I want to apologize.”

She laughed bitterly, “What? That what you said after we returned from Thessia was all lies?” She walked stepped closer to him, daring him to feel threatened, “I may be young for my kind, but I’m not naive. No one can be while fighting this war. You forget that I also have access to almost anything in this galaxy with the tools I have at my fingertips.”

She quieted for a moment, but her voice remained chilled, “If it was some misguided attempt to provoke me out of my grief, it worked to an extent, but I’m not going to thank you for it.”

He was at a loss for words. When he first met the asari only weeks ago, she seemed so much younger in her enthusiasm to learn about his people, but at this hour, she regarded him as nothing but a nuisance. He felt her anger sink all the way down into her aura, she wanted nothing to do with him in this moment. He did not want to argue with her while the sobering somber of his past sank its claws into his mind. He nodded with defeat, “I will take my leave, Liara T’Soni.”

His shoulders relaxed downward as he slunk of her office, feeling severely chastised, but he heard the soft echo of bare feet padding after him so he slowed his pace to a stop. “What did you want?” She asked.

He looked over his shoulder at her, watching curiosity getting the better of her. “I came not to bother you. Only to speak without judgement.”

“Go on,” she urged hesitantly.

“There are many things I would like to tell you about my time in the war before this one- many horrors. They weigh on me heavily. I did not expect the alcoholic beverages served to come attached with such haunting side effects.”

She bobbed her head with understanding, looking near-vulnerable in her nightgown. She ushered him into her room and closed the door behind him.

 

The next evening, he felt lighter. The hours spent with the asari in her office were filled with long talks of desire for peace, as well as the horrors that this war cycle had yet to experience. He worked at his console with little distraction, until a drunken quarian lit up his communication device with her acutely slurred, mechanical voice.

"-I heard about your talk with Liara.” She crooned. “You act so angry but you really care about us."  
“I need you functional to fight the reapers.” He snapped.

"You care about Liara,” Tali gushed, her volume growing louder and softer as she swayed around her comm unit, “You like her." She drew out the word like, as if a young schoolgirl gossiping on her friends’ crushes.

  
“You are intoxicated,” he said coldly, “A foolish risk given the quarian symbiotic physiology.”

  
“And you like me too!" She giggled. His eye twitched as her voice rose in frequency.

  
“This conversation is over.” He snapped, shutting off his comm.

But he slowed his pace in his work, his mind drifting to the asari that held his attentions the night before. He was content with his mind drifting towards her.

**Author's Note:**

> Probably won't go beyond three chapters <3 let me know what you thinK! I've never written for Liara or Javik much.


End file.
